THIS WEEKEND
Thanks to a weak marketplace, Steven Seagal was able to claim the number
one spot for the first time in over three years as Fire
Down Below collected $6.1M over the post-Labor
Day frame. His last film to debut at the top was during the weekend of
February 18-21, 1994 when On Deadly Ground
bumped Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
out of the number one slot. Warner Bros. will be able to use the line "Number
One Movie in America" in its advertisements for the rest of the week
but it won't help their action picture become a hit. Although it is the
box office leader, Fire posted
the weakest #1 debut of any film this year and second lowest weekend gross
for a #1 film in 1997 (Jerry Maguire
led the weekend box office over the January 24-26 period with $5.5M in
its seventh weekend of release). The last film to open at number one with
a smaller amount was nearly a year ago when Maximum
Risk, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme,
collected $5.6M over the September 13-15, 1996 frame.

Seagal's popularity
is steadily declining, as evidenced by the paltry opening of Fire
Down Below. His last three films have
achieved an average 30.2% of their total gross over the opening weekend.
At the same rate, Fire will
eventually top off at $20M. However, if it follows the path of his last
film The Glimmer Man,
Fire will
end up with less than $17M and become the lowest-grossing film of Seagal's
career making less than the $18.9M that Above
The Law collected in 1988. This is nothing
but bad news for Seagal. The table below follows the box office performances
of his films during this decade:

Title

Opening Gross

Total Gross

Release Date

The
Glimmer Man

$7.6M

$20.4M

Oct
96

Under
Siege 2

12.6

50.0

Jul
95

On
Deadly Ground

12.7

38.6

Feb
94

Under
Siege

15.8

83.6

Oct
92

Out
For Justice

10.5

39.6

Apr
91

Marked
For Death

11.8

43.2

Oct
90

Hard
To Kill

9.2

47.4

Feb
90

The
rest of the top ten featured large dropoffs from the four-day holiday weekend.
G.I. Jane
slipped one notch to second with $5.3M bringing its 17-day total to a decent
$33.6M. It should be able to reach the $50M mark before being discharged
from the service. Money Talks
was third with a $4.9M take followed by Hoodlum's
$4M. Air Force One
rounded out the top five with $3.9M bringing its total to $159.3M. In its
sophomore outing, Excess Baggage tumbled
to seventh place with less than $2.9M. Cop
Land and Mimic
once again had large dropoffs near 55% showing no signs of longevity. Continuing
to fight the scum of the universe was Men
in Black which still made the top ten
in its tenth weekend of release. MIB
has the longest run in the nation's top ten since Liar,
Liar spent 13 weekends there.

Outside of the top
ten, Con Air
crossed the $100M mark on Saturday - exactly three months after its release
date. The leading titles in limited release continued to be The
Full Monty with a $17,110 per-screen average
($2.7M to date), In the Company of Men
with an average of $2,770 ($2M to date), and Shall
We Dance? with a $2,683 average and a
$5.9M total so far. In worldwide box office news, The
Lost World has crossed the $500M mark
and Men in Black
will soon race across $400M (see International).

The $6.1M opening of
Fire Down Below
was on track with my projection of $6M. Jane
and AFO
dropped harder than I thought while Money
Talks came close to my guess of $5.2M.

Overall, the top ten
films grossed $37.6M which was up 5% from last year and up 10% from 1995.
Below are final
studio figures for the weekend. Click on the title to jump to its official
home page: